Father. You’re good and kind.”
“I wish it were true, Kathlene, but I’ve failed you this time. And for that reason, I must go.”
“Why can’t I go with you?” I cried out, my voice carrying throughout the teahouse, inviting peeping eyes through the paper doors, listening. Young, curious girls huddled together outside the half-open sliding door, staring out at me, the blond gaijin, but I paid them no attention. Yes, I wanted to be a geisha, but my father was more important to me.
“The danger is too great, Kathlene. I must travel quickly and not always in the most pleasant surroundings. You must stay here with Simouyé-san. She’s a good woman and will treat you like a daughter,” he said. Then he finished with, “You must do what she tells you, Kathlene, even if you don’t understand why. My life depends on it.”
“Is this the only way, Father?”
“Yes. I’ve never asked anything of you, Kathlene,” my father said, deepening his voice with a dark color I hadn’t heard before, ordering me not to disobey him. “But you know the ways of this land, and the importance of filial duty.” He stroked my hair with his fingers, pushing it away from my face and forcing me to look him in the eye. “Don’t bring disgrace upon us.”
Although I was often too curious for my own good, listening to Father speaking to me in such a demanding voice frightened me. Yes, I knew how important duty was in this land. The whole society was built on loyalty to one’s family.
I had no choice but to do as my father asked, though this was a strange proposition fate had dealt me. To achieve my dream to become a geisha, I must give up the one person in the world I loved the most. My father. What unholy trick were the gods playing on me?
With a tiny rattling in my throat, and though my self-control was barely holding, I managed to speak.
“I understand,” I said, feeling the weight of numerous pairs of dark eyes riveted on me, especially the young maid who’d held me back when I wanted to rush forth with my wild emotions.
“Are you certain you know what’s expected of you, Kathlene?” Father demanded, lowering his gaze to meet my eyes.
“I’ll do as you wish, Father,” I said with reverence, not understanding why I did so. Maybe it was because I was painfully aware of the importance of the situation, or the number of black-haired young girls peeping at me, their eyes taking in my uniqueness, their voices whispering. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I was pitted against something I could neither fully understand nor successfully defy. I couldn’t deny I was intrigued with the idea of joining these young women who so openly showed their curiosity of me.
They don’t believe I’ll stay. Americans are like butterflies flitting from flower to flower, a Japanese poet once wrote, and as restless as the ocean. I must pull back my own restless feelings and wait. Wait for my father to return and wait for the day when I would become a geisha.
I let go of his coat.
My eyes blurred with tears I struggled not to let fall when my father kissed me on the cheek. Then without another word, he raced out the secret entrance of the teahouse and disappeared into the rain, into the night, into another world where I couldn’t go. The voyage back to America could take as long as eighteen days, Father had told me, the weather often cold and stormy. Although icebergs didn’t float down the shallow reaches of the Bering Strait, fierce winds blew through the gaps and passes in the Aleutian Islands and many ships were lost in the rough seas. I prayed my father’s ship wouldn’t meet such a fate.
I lifted my chin and pulled up my shoulders. It wasn’t the way of this land to show emotion in front of anyone. I forced myself to show courage and make my father proud of me.
Here at this late hour on this summer night in the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree, I would begin my training to become a geisha. Geiko, as the geisha were called in Kioto dialect. I’d learn to be the perfect woman in an artificial world where such a woman was schooled in the erotic, her mouth sensuous, her smile winning but discreet, her eyes sparkling, ready to seduce as well as to entertain.
I’d be taught to have better manners than anyone else but to also speak my mind, to laugh inan engaging manner and to be flirtatious. Every dainty gesture—whether it be the lowering of my eyes, the tilt of my head to show the exposed back of my neck, the sway of my long fingers—would complement the meticulous stylization of my training. I’d exude the art of sexual sublimation and function as a living sculpture of the female ideal, polished to perfection.
And always, above everything else, I would make men feel good. I’d learn how to entice them with the curves of my body and bring them sexual excitement. Like a bee savoring its first taste of the nectar or a hungry bird pecking at the peach and melting the soft pulp in its mouth, so the world of pleasure would be my world, embracing me like a lost daughter.
Gathering up my curious and girlish spirit and putting it away into a secret spot in my heart until I could let it run free once more, I turned to Simouyé and bowed.
“I’m ready to begin my training to become a geisha.”
3
Snip-snip. Snip-snip.
My stomach clenched with fear. What was that noise? It sounded like scissors cutting. I tried to open my eyes to see what was going on. I couldn’t. I lay helpless, unable to move, as if I were under a spell.
Then I heard a different sound. A sigh, then another, followed by more snip-snips and a paper door sliding open. A girl’s voice asked, “What are you doing, Youki-san?”
“Cutting off her golden hair.”
My hair? Oh, no! I struggled, struggled, but I couldn’t raise my arm to protect my hair.
“Why, Youki-san? She’s so beautiful.”
“Don’t you understand, Mariko-san? She’ll ruin everything for us with her hair the color of silken gold threads.”
Ruin what? I kept trying to open my eyes, move my arms, my legs. I couldn’t. My lids weighed so heavy on my eyes while the rest of my body lay helpless like the cold, slimy fish I’d seen tossed up onto the pier when Father took me down to the wharf to meet the ships arriving from across the sea.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t move. I lay on my back on a scratchy mat digging into my skin, shielded from its prickly weave by what I perceived to be a sheer kimono underrobe, its silkiness hugging my body. A cool breeze swept over my skin when someone walked near me. I heard the swish of long robes on the tatami mat and the glide of soft feet. Salty drops of perspiration wet my lips and drizzled down my chin. I let out my breath and relaxed. The girls had gone.
Where am I? What happened?
I remembered following Simouyé down a shining corridor and upstairs to a long, low room divided into three sections by screens of dull gold paper. Before she could stop me, I ran to the open balcony of polished cedar and looked out into the night, hoping to see my father. But he had vanished.
My heart ached so, I couldn’t help but sink down to my knees in front of a wall screen and claw at the delicate
